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Description

Unprecedented in scope – like its companion volume on the High Renaissance, Mannerism – this sixth volume in the Architecture in Context series traces the development of architecture and decoration in the 17th and early 18th centuries – particularly the transformation of rationalist Classical ideals into the emotive, highly theatrical style known as Baroque and the further development away from architectonic principles to the free-ranging decorative style known as Rococo.

It begins with an outline of the politics of Absolutism and its opposite over the century from the Thirty Years’ War to the War of the Austrian Succession: this is illustrated with images largely chosen from the major artists of the day; a supplementary introduction outlines the cross-currents of painting in the early Baroque era. The first substantive section deals with the seminal masters active in Rome – Maderno, Cortona, Borromini and Bernini – and their contemporaries there, in Venice and in Piedmont. The second section deals with the seminal French masters – above all François Mansart, Louis Le Vau, Andre Le Nôtre, Jules Hardouin-Mansart and the latter’s followers who developed the Rococo style in the domestic field. The rest of the book is divided into three large sections: the Protestant North – the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Britain; the Divided Centre – the Catholic powers of central Europe and southern Germany, the Protestants of northern Germany and the Orthodox Russians; the Catholic South – the Iberian kingdoms and their dominions in southern Italy and the Americas.

Reviews

‘From Cortona’s exciting innovations in Italy, to the last gasp of the Baroque in Havana, Christopher Tadgell has produced an exhilarating survey of this most dynamic of styles, in the Old World and the New, that has no rival in scope or authority.’ - Alastair Laing (formerly Curator of Pictures & Sculpture, The National Trust)

Table of Contents

Dynastic Conflict in the Age of Absolutism Cross Currents of Painting in a Modernist Era Part 1: Seminal Italians 1.1. Inception of the High Baroque in Rome 1.2. The Style of the Church Triumphant 1.3. Roman Baroque at its Apogee 1.4. Venice 1.5. Piedmont Part 2: Seminal French 2.1. From Richelieu to Mazarin 2.2. Louis XIV and French Ascendancy 2.3. Régence and the Early Years of Louis XV Part 3: Northern Protestants 3.1. The Dutch and Scandinavians 3.2. Britain Part 4: Divided Centre and Orthodox East 4.1. Advance of Baroque between Two Wars 4.2. Imperial Baroque and its Austrian Monastic Derivative 4.3. Advanced Baroque and the advent of Rococo 4.4. Exceptional Talent in Bohemia and Bavaria 4.5. From Augustan Dresden to Warsaw 4.6. From Berlin to Bayreuth 4.7. Russia: From Moscow to Saint Petersburg Part 5: The Catholic South and its New Worlds 5.1. Habsburg to Bourbon in Naples and Sicily 5.2. Habsburg to Bourbon in Spain 5.3. Palaces of the Southern Bourbons 5.4. The Golden Age of Portugal at Home and Abroad 5.5. Bourbon America Glossary Further Reading Index

About the Author

Christopher Tadgell taught architectural history for almost thirty years before devoting himself full-time to writing and research, travelling the world to see and photograph buildings from every tradition and period.

Born in Sydney, he studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in London. In 1974 he was awarded his PhD for a thesis on the Neoclassical architectural theorist, Ange-Jacques Gabriel. He subsequently taught in London and at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Canterbury, with interludes as F.L. Morgan Professor of Architectural Design at the University of Louisville and as a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has lectured at academic institutions around the world, including the universities of Princeton, Harvard, Columbia and Cornell, the Graham Foundation in Chicago, and Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute in the UK. He is a Trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a member of both the British and American Societies of Architectural Historians.

His The History of Architecture in India (1990, several reprints, Phaidon) is the definitive one-volume account of the architecture of the subcontinent, while many publications on French architecture include the standard account in Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration (ed. Blunt, 1978, Elek). He has contributed many articles on Indian and French architecture to The Grove Dictionary of Art and other major reference books.

About the Series

Architecture in Context is a series of seven books by Christopher Tadgell describing and illustrating all the seminal traditions from man’s early settlements in the Euphrates and Jordan valleys to the technologically complex and stylistically sophisticated buildings of the second half of the twentieth century. In a synthesis of extraordinary range, it brings together the fruits of a lifetime of teaching and travelling the world, seeing and photographing buildings. Each stand-alone volume sets the buildings described and illustrated within their political, technological, social and cultural contexts, exploring architecture not only as the development of form but as an expression of the civilization within which it evolved.

The series focuses on the story of the Classical tradition from its origins in Mesopotamia and Egypt, through its realization in ancient Greece and Rome, to the Renaissance, Neo-Classicism, Eclecticism and Modernism. This thread is supplemented with excursions to cover the development of architecture in Central America, India, South-East Asia, and the Islamic world.

For students of architecture and art history, for travellers and for readers who want to understand the genesis of the buildings they see around them, each volume provides a complete, readable and superbly illustrated reference.